Senate control ‘on knife’s edge’

Last week, Pryor became the first candidate to invoke the Ebola scare in television ads, attacking Cotton for voting against spending to prepare for pandemics. Republicans say the ad was a sign of desperation.

Republicans think they’re up in the low-to-mid single digits, with Obama’s low-30s approval too much for Pryor to withstand. A GOP poll in the field last week found ominous signs for Pryor: Only 34 percent of respondents say he has earned another term, with 56 percent saying it’s time to give someone else a chance. On another question, 35 percent said they want someone who will help implement Obama’s agenda and 54 percent said they prefer a check and balance.

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Other polls have shown similar numbers in Louisiana, where the president’s popularity is also in the 30s.

“The base is locked in, and the undecided voters haven’t been paying attention yet,” said Rob Collins, executive director of the NRSC.

In the interviews, Democrats acknowledged the president is a liability in key states like Arkansas and Louisiana and said their chances hinge on Obama’s popularity not slipping any further. “We don’t know how far he’s going to drop,” a Democratic strategist said.

In close races, the parties’ turnout operations could prove critical. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending $60 million on its biggest field program ever, dubbed The Bannock Street Project, targeting voters who would otherwise stay home in an off-year election. In red states like Louisiana and Arkansas, where Obama was never competitive, there was not as concerted an effort to register black voters in 2012 as in the top presidential battlegrounds of North Carolina or Virginia.

Sources say that internal Republican voter models are built on the assumption that the DSCC project will give the other side a 1- to 2-percentage-point advantage to the Democratic candidate in each race where it is investing most heavily, such as Colorado, Georgia and Iowa.

Still, GOP campaigns are watching for metrics to gauge how effective the Democratic effort is. In Arkansas, for example, Republicans take heart that records show Democrats have registered only 6,000 new voters so far. Democrats say turnout among African-Americans in the state could be the difference in the race. One reason polling has been off is that no one knows whether they’ll make up 7 percent of the electorate or closer to 14 percent. Unlike other states, the black population is spread out and more rural — which makes it a little harder to organize.

The GOP is also investing in its own field efforts. The Republican National Committee upped its budget for get-out-the-vote efforts in Senate races by $8 million in the past few days, and they will use it to fully fund a program aimed at driving up early vote totals for their candidates. The RNC now plans to spend $100 million on the midterms.

While both parties are essentially in agreement on the current state of play, they’re at odds over how the sliver of undecided voters will make their minds.

Republicans believe the elections will turn on a general feeling that the world is in chaos: a stagnant economy, inept implementation of the health care law, the Middle East burning and the border crisis.

“They’ve done a very good job of raising money, but all of the money in the world won’t compensate for the massive headwinds that haven’t really kicked in yet,” said GOP strategist Chris LaCivita, who worked at the NRSC during the 2010 cycle and predicts Republicans will pick up a minimum of six Senate seats.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who chairs the DSCC, predicted that voters will make a more nuanced choice between what he called independent-minded Democrats and Republicans “beholden to the tea party and the Koch brothers.”

“Even in deep-red states, voters don’t want to elect candidates who are pushing an anti-middle class agenda that would gut Medicare, privatize Social Security and attack women’s health care,” said Bennet.

Indeed, most Democratic spending in Bennet’s home state of Colorado has focused on Republican Cory Gardner’s past support for a “personhood” amendment to the state’s Constitution (which he has since renounced) and his opposition to abortion. The bet is that this resonates with a libertarian-minded electorate and women in the Denver suburbs.

The biggest wild card both parties are watching is immigration. Obama had been expected to bypass Congress and issue an executive order before November, though there are indications the White House might delay action until after the election. If he moves sooner to defer deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants, it could help drive the Democratic base. But it could also threaten to fire up conservatives and turn off independents who feel that Obama has overreached.

“There are a lot of votes hanging out there right now that will break our way late, in early October, or sooner, should the president take the drastic action he’s toying with,” said the NRSC’s Collins.

But Rob Jesmer, the previous executive director of the NRSC, thinks too many close races are on the map for Democrats to hold on.

“I don’t think this is going to be 2010,” he said. “It doesn’t feel the same way to me, but it just seems inconceivable that they’re going to win every one of those races.”